Rational systems provide the background while visual communications prevail in the foreground in a perfectly integrated network, where human beings are the vibrating molecules that keep the whole hive going. All of a sudden, an epidemic of blindness falls upon this world order. Disruption is instant and total. Since absolutely everything is dependent on visual orientation, the whole system collapses like a sand castle touched by an unexpected wave. Only then do people realize that they were already blind long before.

From within the ensuing chaos, the character played by Julianne Moore emerges as the modern Ariadne. She is the only one who is not affected by the epidemic. She will eventually use her sight to drag a group of people out of the deadly vortex by a rope. They are a group of twelve-- a rather symbolic number, like the apostles, the knights of the Round Table, the twelve peers of France, hence a flicker of hope.

To make things more interesting, one could compare Blindness with another film, shot just about a year earlier, The Smell from the Toilet Drain , directed by Heitor Dhalia. It is a local production by a myriad of little independent producers, with an all-Brazilian cast, made with a rather restricted budget, which nevertheless achieved a warm reception among audiences and critics in general. For all these credentials we could consider it as a part of traditional Brazilian cinema, old style. But is it? Surprise, surprise, it has a lot to do with Blindness.

First of all, it is also an allegory that makes a similar effort to erase any solid references to time, place and context. The story is about the owner of a second-hand shop, who humiliates and abuses the sellers when they come to his office because he knows they are desperate for the money. Taking for granted that everybody has a price, he wants to shout out loud to his victims how shamefully cheap they actually are. Their degradation gives him the pride of a superior rank, a discriminating mind, a prophylactic mission and a noble destiny.

As many others scattered all over big cities, he is a modern Dr Faustus, a master in the business of buying and selling souls. The camera plays an essential role in these dialogues of degradation. Since the shopkeeper and his customers are seated in front of one another, it is the sight of the powerful buyer which casts down the humble seller. Thus clever camera movements underscore this abject play, by directing the wide-open eyes of the greedy man to the abased countenance of his dispossessed clients. The women are additionally humiliated; he demands that they expose themselves nude to his possessive eyes.

At a certain point the shopkeeper buys a large artificial eye, immediately terrifying his victims with his triple sight. Here we have almost the opposite of Blindness , meaning, however, almost exactly the same thing. Reason is equal to sight that is equal to power. Closing the eyes of the shopkeeper for good becomes not only the main aim of all those vilified creatures but also the ethical stance of the film itself.

Although the production of this film is not cosmopolitan, the final product can nevertheless be shown anywhere in the world without losing any of its decisive features or meanings. It is not designed to talk to Brazilian audiences in particular about their concerns, but to world audiences at large, about world dilemmas present and future. Although produced, directed and shot in Brazil by Brazilians, it can travel the world over. In this case, again, it is world cinema made in Brazil, rather than Brazilian cinema.

Is this new trend good? Is it bad? Of course, it is up to the individual to form his or her own opinion about it. What is clear, however, is that when cinema assumes a worldly configuration, it becomes more abstract, more aloof, more thinly shaped into universal parables and empty surfaces. After all, the world is more of a word than a place. Being everywhere is also being nowhere in particular; referring to everybody also misses the concrete living creature. The films and the trends discussed here ring an alarm. Trying to encompass the world as whole into a single scene, as a sublimated Plastic City submitted to the panoptic eye of its globalized camera, cinema risks creating the most monumental ever form of collective blindness.

To frame the poetics of the ordinary in terms of subtlety and delicateness is to propose an antidote both for cynicism and for what I call Neo-Naturalism. Neo-Naturalism features an aesthetics of excess, of violence and cruelty, that is considered to be more suited to dealing with our times. At the national level, civil wars, multi-ethnic urban conflicts, and narco-trafficking emerge as themes to represent an apocalyptic and hopeless barbarism of our times.

Alongside this movement, another cinematography, grounded on a poetics of everyday life, has emerged, which I shall call the lineage of a lost delicateness. Without sounding like a nostalgic Bossa Nova, I think this trend seeks to recover the subtlety that is so present in the songs by Chico Buarque and Paulinho da Viola. For, far from mere escapism from a cruel reality, they translate into ethical and aesthetic alternatives. From the viewpoint of the modern Brazilian movies, it is important to remember, in this initial reflection about the ordinariness of intimacy, that a long tradition marks the home by the nostalgia of colonial spaces, of a lost rural environment.

There is much lyricism in the account of the home, regardless of the decadence of rural patriarchy. Two other works in this genre deserve further analysis. That would be more praise than criticism. Domingos de Oliveira is another s director distanced from Cinema Novo, which might explain his not being highly regarded. Another New Cinema director is Carlos Diegues. This is neither about perverting the family as in the work of Nelson Rodrigues, nor about over-privileging representations, but about retrieving family affection in its fragility.

Not the violated, but the sheltered, protected body. This journey is just beginning. She greeted her husband when he walked in at the end of the day, and asked him about his meeting at the office, but as soon as he finished replying, she could no longer remember what she had asked him. Having put on two drops of her precious Chanel no. When that unique peacefulness penetrated the room, semi-lit by a dim table lamp, she knew she was dying. Then, she could hear a bit less, and felt a dizziness like a ship in a sea storm.

And when the dizziness was gone, and she opened her eyes, she smiled because, actually, it was all so simple. Denilson Lopes noslined bighost. Likewise, we may agree that national cinemas seek to define, challenge, and reshape national identities. For Brazilians me included , it is important to break out of our comfort zone to observe how others perceive us, even if through a reflection of a distorted mirror, to help us examine our collective identities. For Americans, it is interesting to reflect upon the type of foreign movies that are successful and also those that are unsuccessful in the United States, to try to understand the rationale for their failure or success.

Such outcomes are obviously often revealing of cultural values and beliefs. Brazilian cinema has a long tradition of struggling to represent its multicultural and multiethnic population on the screen. There is, however, no question that Brazilian cinema raises other kinds of interesting discussions that go beyond the important question of denouncing extreme poverty and oppression.

In this short essay, I briefly analyze how U. More specifically, I looked at nearly fifty course syllabi from colleges all over the country that include Brazilian cinema in some fashion and divided them into four categories. The tendency is to offer at least a whole unit dedicated to the study of Brazilian cinema. Not surprisingly, even a brief examination of our corpus reveals that there is a heavy accent on Cinema Novo New Cinema , the Brazilian film movement celebrated by intellectuals all over the world.

This movement lasted for more than a decade and, predictably, is quite heterogeneous. Curiously enough, very few syllabi propose to screen entire films from the first phase of Cinema Novo. Many courses include only a selection of clips, most likely featuring Vidas Secas and Deus e o diabo na terra do sol. These movies are certainly superb in many ways, including their cinematic approach to translating Brazilian reality for the screen. Their aesthetic, however, differs radically from the action-packed style to which the U.

Therefore, professors might have chosen to introduce Cinema Novo in homeopathic dosage, so students might become interested without being overwhelmed by long movies that pertain to a very different cinematic tradition. The second phase of Cinema Novo has as its landmark the infamous military coup, which had a profound impact on Brazilian society. In the third phase began, when a coup within the coup almost completely banished civil rights in Brazil. During the second phase, filmmakers had to deal with their dismay over the disastrous authoritarian regime.

The filmmakers sought to explore the reasons behind the sudden squashing of the left and progressive forces in Brazil. Their disenchantment led them to produce movies that revealed their despair through characters adrift, hopelessly searching for answers. In this bitter new phase, Cinema Novo directors also had to face the fact that, although critically acclaimed, their movies did not attract the popular audiences with whom they wanted to dialogue.

The reaction to this failure was the production of films imbued with social criticism but with popular appeal that would enable them to perform well at the box office Xavier, The military implemented greater censorship restrictions and persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, killed, or exiled left-wing individuals from all walks of life, including hundred of intellectuals.

Cinema Novo directors who remained in the country chose to overcome censorship by resorting to tropicalista strategies. Tropicalismo was an artistic movement from the s that encompassed all sorts of artistic manifestations including poetry, music, theater and, of course, film. Tropicalism rendered patriarchal, traditional cultures anachronistic using the most advanced or fashionable idioms and techniques in the world, thus producing an allegory of Brazil that exposed a real historical abyss, a junction of different stages of capitalist development.

Tropicalism has its roots in the s and, more specifically, in the ideas of Oswald de Andrade, who proposed a strategy of cultural anti-imperialism, in which foreign cultures from the so-called developed countries should neither be rejected nor naively accepted. Instead they should be devoured, digested, recycled and mixed with local cultures to produce new cultural paradigms.

Several hypotheses explain the popularity of this movie in the classroom setting. Since it was made to reach out to a large audience, it is one of the most palatable examples of Cinema Novo films, and U. Furthermore, the powerful dark-comedy is full of allusions to historical events. Thus, it could serve as a means to discuss Brazilian history and artistic movements, including Portuguese colonization, the attempts by France to seize Brazil, cannibalism as a real indigenous practice and as an artistic-political concept.

Ironically, the film became renowned through the world in large part because its nudity content led to its banishment from the Cannes film festival. In this sense, the movie also offers the option of examining whether and how nudity can be used in film in a non-exploitative manner.

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Briefly, this movie portrays the birth of a slum in Rio de Janeiro and the escalation of crime, violence, and drug-dealing over two decades in that environment. Cidade de Deus presents violence in a decontextualized manner, without any reference to the origins of this social plague or any discussion about its systemic nature. The favela is depicted as completely detached from the urban environment; its inhabitants are portrayed as gangsters who kill each other without purpose.

The frantic rhythm of Cidade de Deus , with guns shooting in the background, knives and blades shining in the sun, and corpses everywhere, leaves the audience breathless. In most courses pertaining to the first category of syllabi and even in some survey courses about Latin American cinema, which belong to the second category, Cidade de Deus tends to be selected as the only movie representing Brazil. One wonders whether its use simply reinforces the stereotype of violence in large Brazilian cities. I hope, however, that it serves as a platform to discuss larger social issues and different modes of representing violence on the screen.

This is a serious issue, insofar as students often form their first impressions of politics, culture and even geography from movies, whether seen in a theatre or a classroom context. The choice of films to go on a syllabus is significant because it is not random. When designing a course on Brazilian cinema or even a short unit about it, several questions come to mind. Its main purpose is to explore Brazilian cinematic representations through American lenses.

I believe that there is no single answer to these questions. All depends on the context, which is inevitably constantly in flux. Every spring she offers a writing-intensive course on Brazilian cinema that aims at introducing students to cinematic traditions in Brazil, as well as to Brazilian culture, stylistics, language variation, and academic Portuguese.

Throughout the year , while I was finishing my book Otros mundos on New Argentine Cinema, I kept thinking both about recent film productions and the turmoil caused by the Peronist government in the s. As I was putting the finishing touches on my book, I took frequent breaks to view the televised march to the Plaza de Mayo —a so-called popular mobilization— that had been organized by the new Peronist government.

In retrospect, the film seems prophetic. In its final scenes, it not only invokes the people as a subject of history, but also predicts their return to full glory. Once the fiction that had been constructed by the Peronist government of Carlos Menem in the 90s dissipated, the people returned to the forefront to participate actively in decision-making.

Memoria del saqueo restores the idea of politics in film because it assumes the presence of the people the appearance of many of them in the background as a central conceptual category of the film. After several works of fiction, with Memoria del saqueo , Solanas returned to the language of the physical—the use of the human body— that had characterized his first film with its nervous movement of the camera in the middle of the street what a witness in danger would see and with shots of agitated and vociferous bodies trying to unmask the power and the falseness of the image.

He depicts the choreography of multitudes whose their enthusiasm and political objectives transformed them into el pueblo , hence into protagonists of history. In any case, the fact is that Solanas returned the great tradition in which masses of people burst upon the silver screen, and that film, in turn, creates an image of the people. The image in trance, through that image the multitudes pass to acquire a visible form in the choreography of bodies that fills up the big screen, that goes beyond the screen and shatters it.

Movies from the 90s often questioned the discrepancies between the politics of action and politics in the form of strategic thinking , and one of the ways these films dealt with the issue of politics was to leave images empty through several means. The most extreme example of this emptying process was that of Lisandro Alonso en La libertad : in this film, there is almost never more than one person in sight, and from the very beginning, the concept of freedom and the image of people appear as a dichotomy.

Another strategy is that of Pablo Trapero: in El bonaerense a film about a policeman nicknamed Zapa in Buenos Aires Province , the protagonist comes upon a piquetero march, but simply goes his own way, paying no attention to this mass protest that blocks the road. It is as if the El bonaerense had encountered a fragment of Memoria del saqueo , but had not fallen under its spell. Unlike the famous poster for The Hour of the Furnaces , showing close-ups of faces distorted by shouting, the scenes in Silvia Prieto register apathetic or unexpressive faces.

We go from the world of the masculine to a feminine multitude, from social demands to demands for life, from the audacity of popular outcry, expressed through shouts that fill up the screen, to emptiness and dispossession as elemental starting points. Rather than seeing politics as an external fact that sustains the image, these films—negating the category that dominated Argentine film from the 60s to the 80s—introduce the concept of the political through images, as a force in and of itself and as an open question.

In addition to the appearance of the Virgin, the miracle is that the pilgrimages and tourism by the faithful have changed the economy of the city so that it revolves around religious tourism. The substitution of the believer for the worker, of the consumer for the citizen, demonstrates the decline of political belief as the central factor in the choreography of masses. Moreover, the very body of woman becomes inserted into the image, bringing an irreversible and complex link between the public and the private that will displace those choreographies of public space of politically militant films through this complex umbrella of concepts under which the public and private have to be constantly redefined.

A diagnosis for changing times, emptiness, however, is a negation of the political that allows the interpretation of politics as impossibility, deficiency and even disorientation a position that in any case does not cease to be powerful if one thinks of it as a rejection of identity or political demands to which films were subject in Argentina for a long period.

However, in this instance, nothingness replaces the people because the public scenario in which the actors operate, as well as the very concept of pueblo , have been thrust into crisis. Instead of relying on conventional techniques of making the people visible they are just outside and will burst upon the screen , these more recent films take a tiny detail such as a fingerprint or a clue as their starting point. In this manner, they create connections between the bodies choreographies and identities that are never perceived as stable.

In the process of creating community from fragmented parts, an emptiness is always created as well. It is precisely in this twilight between community and emptiness that I believe we ought to think of how the political is portrayed in new Argentine film. How can one penetrate the state so that it will have to tell the truth?

This seems to be the question that characterizes the first investigations of the protagonist the director himself. In total contradiction to this mandate, Prividera uses film to see more, to see everything that is possible to see, though not exactly the truth, but the ways in which individuals have processed the past into a regime of fiction that consists of repressing the intolerable. Indeed, several of the documentaries about militancy and the disappeared in Argentina stage a body, rather than a scene.

The many the collective, the community cannot help displaying the fissure that makes any choreography impossible. In contrast to this temporal and intellectual out-of-phase quality that M explores is Copacabana , one of the more energetic films marked by collective choreography, that.

Made as a television documentary to illustrate the preparations for the celebrations for the Virgen of Copacabana by the Bolivian community in en Buenos Aires, the final scene occurs along the border and in customs, when Bolivian immigrants entering into Argentina are being checked by the border guards. After first traveling through the fair, the film focuses on a series of dances that shine on their own right. The bodies registered by the camera move with coordination and grace throughout the entire course of the film, even in a meeting of the the bosses in which organization co-exists with argument.

Here are two unrelated orders that do not mix, and their rhythms are constantly present throughout the film: the eye of the director upon the lives of his subjects, neither surrendering to the other. This encounter between the Bolivian community and the most modernist of the New Argentine Film directors, also the involved son of a disappeared woman, also the actor-director who rejects any gesture of sentimental identification is what produces the political.

As separate entities, they do not connect the image with politics. However, they do make us ask about the very possibility of politics when certain traditional categories—like that of the people—no longer are dynamic or effective. Gonzalo Aguilar is a professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. La comunidad es algo por venir en un ensamblaje de partes que se hacen visibles, anulando toda exterioridad.

La comunidad boliviana vive camouflada en una ciudad que es totalmente indiferente a su existencia como lo subrayan las excepcionales perspectivas urbanas de Rejtman pero no por eso se diluye y abandona su trama secreta. Dos formas que se encuentran sin claudicar una frente a la otra. By Ana Amado. At the same time, they use these diverse expressions as a form of memorial tribute. Several recent Argentine films took their vital energy from this process, as children of the victims dedicated themselves to the task of reviewing the past. Since the mids, these creative men and women have been distilling their testimonies through heterogenous narratives based on a mix of references, a variety of voices, an accumulation of knowledge.

Audiovisual material is perhaps the most frequently used supporting technique, with new combinations and unexpected constructions of ways of creating private biography through stories with strong historic and narrative implications. These young men and women are filmmakers, video producers and artists who follow the international growing trend of the last decade to make documentaries that explore issues of memory and identity.

In the group of documentaries dedicated to the consequences of the dictatorship, films made by the children of the victims and survivors have a very particular role, focusing on history to find a voice and a generational space in the context of the present debates about the 60s and 70s in Argentina. That decade witnessed a surge in collective and social forces; neither actions nor ideas could be linked to individual agents.

Today, the revolutionary actions of the parents are reconstructed through an aesthetic act on the part of their children, who portray them as heroic subjects seen through their own narration. Nevertheless, they are resistant to the type of relatively idyllic representation that characterized documentaries from the earlier generation.

In the late 90s and the first years of this century, a series of testimonial documentaries register a critical or self-critical stance by former political militants and guerrillas, who revisit their actions in the 70s with the more structured language of politics as an institution. A similar tendency can be found in testimonial literature. In contrast, the voices in the documentaries by the children recreate the childhood memories filled with the violence of kidnappings, absences, death and images in which the daily perception of threats seems to be associated precisely with the language of politics.

Each film offers direct or indirect ways of revisiting the actions and political discourse of the previous generation. The filmmakers can elect to remain at the margin of the political arguments that led their parents to sacrifice their lives in order to concentrate on the failed circuits of their own wounded memories with the help of a family integrated by their generational and vocational peers. The polemical film Los rubios by Albertina Carri is one example of this type of film. Distancing themselves from inherited discourses, each film tries to invent a way of supporting its arguments about what is reasonable or irrational, what is sensible or resolutely subversive in the review of the history of the period of the dictatorships.

And in this review and invention of past scenes that are imagined in various forms, the children frame the idea of generations as a narrative and temporal construct as well as a biological one of genealogy, as a form of resistance to their legacies and, finally, as a formal operation of timelessness. The question becomes why the parent followed the path of desire—that of the revolutionary cause, even though death was one of the possible consequences—instead of guaranteeing his or her presence to the children. The viewer thus catches a glimpse of an ambivalent image hovering between an epic profile of parents who are protagonists in a collective historical endeavor and at the same time deserters in the sphere of private emotions.

At the same time, the very existence of the orphans or bereaved familiars is precisely the proof that we could call unique, that is, symptomatic, of the traumatic way in which politics intertwines with the language of intimacy and of experience. Their formal operations of disassociation and fragmentation give the films a certain aesthetic modernity, although, paradoxically, they reject the all-encompassing figures of political modernity in which their parents participated in the 60s and 70s through their belief in revolution.

On the other hand, dependency is revealed in the attachment to origins, in the resurrection of an absent subject that in some cases is portrayed or emerges fitfully; an extreme example of this elision is found in Los rubios in which throughout the entire movie no image replaces the emptiness of absence. Or the subject is evoked invoked, narrated, explained by a series of witnesses that replace the absent dead person who is unable to testify. Through images, texts or testimonies, literally and metaphorically, characters, ideas, places, events, situations and values are resuscitated within a historic gallery designed by the narrators and populated by a multiplicity of named portraits: the ghosts of the 70s.

The language of theatre has operated in a similar fashion. On the local stage, the first was Teatro por la Identidad Identity Theatre which in the past decade has presented a cycle of plays destined to support from the realm of creativity the strategy of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo to find and identify the young people who were whisked off as babies from concentration camps by the dictatorship.

Personal history is converted into the direct revelation of collective history. Instead of representing characters imagined by an author, the characters play themselves and tell their own stories and those of their parents. Director Lola Arias, born in , is the same generation as her actors-characters. She describes her staging and intentions: "Six actors born in the decade of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s reconstruct the youth of their parents through photos, letters, tapes, used clothing, stories and erased memories.

Who were my parents when I was born? What was Argentina like before I learned to talk? Each actor does a remake of scenes from the past to understand the future. As doubles for the risk of their parents, the children wear their clothing and try to present the family history Ana Amado is an Argentine essayist and film critic. Fempress , as well as the author of numerous texts in books and magazines in Argentina and abroad.

In , Fernando Ezequiel Solanas b. The film has never been restored in its entirety, and few have seen it. Nevertheless, it remains a legendary testimony to collective political unrest, particularly influential for its promotion of cinema as a new vehicle of protest against a ruling regime. His career in cinema began at age 26, with the filming of Seguir andando Divided into three parts, the minute documentary managed to be many things at once: instrument of leftist political and social protest; manifesto; educational cinematic debate; essay of cultural interpretation of Latin America in general and of Argentina in particular; a filmic collage, collecting and juxtaposing fragments from other films of the period; active artifact in the democratization of images; unofficial history.

It was also the most controversial film of the s. The following year, Solanas went into exile. Without losing his political mission, the filmmaker started to develop fictional stories, mixing present realities with the political and cultural myths of Argentina, as he had begun to do with Los hijos de Fierro.

Music, mise-en-scene, and concern with the plastic and the visual assumed primacy in his work. This new combination of elements produced a masterpiece of intense emotional force: Tangos, el exilio de Gardel Tangos is the great film of South American exile. In Tangos , Solanas directs a film that is both personal and representative of the era. This aesthetic is risky, but at the same time participates in a musical tradition that is well established both inside and outside the cinema.

The splendid choreography displays a variety of tango styles, from traditional to modern, allowing the dance to shine. The progression also shows that the narration, too, is mobile, and should not remain paralyzed in a simple realist telling. The sets and cinematography achieve a ghostly atmosphere, with lights curiously multiplied by mist, smoke, and rain-wet ground.

Sur does not employ the choreography of Tangos , but the two films share the aesthetic required to tell a subjective story in an objective manner. Sur is the story of love for a woman, for a city, and for a country. Democracy is supposed to permit and promote political and cultural criticism. El viaje and La nube satirized the government, and not without consequence.

Argentina, In Buenos Aires, people took to the streets in massive and irrepressible protests. The president declared a state of siege, which only aggravated the situation. The more police that were sent to the street to repress the uprising, the more hopeless the battle for control became. These events energized Solanas, as they did thousands of other Argentines. He was inspired to capture on film a historical milestone that, while it had plenty of antecedents, would have far-reaching consequences. Solanas felt that current events should be explored in order to understand the historical moment, as well as the ones that would follow.

Above all, he wanted to put in perspective a long history of governmental corruption, on the one hand, and the history of popular resistance on the other. Three decades had passed since La hora de los hornos , when Solanas rediscovered the cinema of the street. Cinematographic techniques had changed in these years, and heavy 16mm cameras were traded in for camcorders and high-definition digital.

With these innovations, the cinema of Solanas regained its youth. Indeed, Solanas narrates each of these films himself, speaking on camera with his protagonists. Inverting the perspective of Memoria del saqueo , which relates the abuses of the system, La dignidad de los nadies tells the story of popular resistance. This last film undertakes a sharp illustration of the looting with just a single example: the state railroads.

In some sections of the film the thefts described are nearly unbelievable: looters make off with not only thousands of steel rails, but also with the warehouses that stored them. As in all of his films, Solanas points directly to the names of the accused. In this sense his films are also escraches , a colloquial and untranslatable word that describes physical acts of denunciation, peaceful but effective actions of the victims themselves, that is, the citizens.

Producer Lita Stantic b. Incredibly generous with her time and opinions, Lita Stantic was kind enough to receive me on two early autumn afternoons in May, at her beautiful office in the Palermo Hollywood neighborhood of Buenos Aires where we discussed the course of her long and storied career. Lita Stantic : There are now new generations and perhaps with the new generations, the same impact is not felt as with the so-called New Argentine Cinema.

And moreover, in previous years, there were generations of young folk in film that were quite mixed, no? The generation— the one that began in the late 90s——is more homogeneous in regards to age, with everyone ish to ish. In regards to the generation of the 60s, this generation was more individualistic. The generation of the 60s was more of a cohesive group.

Here they are It is not a generation, because it is a group of people who began to make their first film over a number of years, but these films represent a departure in Argentine film. LS : And the new is already starting to be old, right? The ex-new. Ever since I was a little girl, I saw Argentina as a place of salvation. I associated Europe with the war. It seems unbelievable after all that has happened in Argentina. I could not live in another place, and during the dictatorship, I did not leave, in spite of the fact that I was connected to many people who disappeared.

I thought at one point that I was going to leave, but I had a very strong relationship with the country and I decided to stay. HG : One of the very interesting points about New Argentine Cinema is the political strand underlying it, sometimes quite subtle. LS : I met Lucrecia Martel in What happens is that history imposes itself. At times, an author is showing what she has lived without any intentions of pointing out a certain theme, of marking a historical moment.

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HG : Most certainly. If we look at that film retrospectively, one notes that it captures a historical moment perfectly. The curious thing is that there are coincidencesand at time the context filters through; the context always appears, and the context is political. LS : But he did not like giving the film this connotation at the time. But it happens. HG : But as a producer, do you yourself—with a bit of distance between yourself and your projects—see these political aspects in your work?

LS : No. But can we also understand your career in another fashion, as a way of fomenting national cinema, of helping to create a new Argentine cinema? Were you thinking of this during the first years of the New Argentine Cinema in the s? LS : I would say no. If someone of my generation had brought me a book that I liked, I would have produced it. I did not opt for a particular generation, first of all. I like films that leave something with me.

That is, I like to leave the movie house as a transformed person. And well, the selection has to do a bit with this factor. I want to direct a screenplay that tranforms me, or will transform those who view it. I was shaped as a young woman by film and reading. I think that in a certain way film tells us something about humanity.

It makes us undertand more. This is what makes me select a film to direct—-also in the films I like to watch. I like the Dardenne Brothers more than I do U. But I like the films that make me keep on thinking, that can still transform me, that can make me see life in some other fashion, and understand mankind, humanity. I pick something that I like, that gets to me in a certain way. I save that for later.

HG : What was the first time that you realized that film had the possibiity to transform, to change, to create a distinctive viewpoint, a way of understanding and seeing the world? My idea, when I was an adolescent, around 13 or 14 years old, was that I wanted to be a film critic. Because, well, at that moment, and even when I was finishing up high school, it was highly unlikely that the future of a woman could be in the film industry.

Production teams were completely masculine. So it seemed to me that the closest I could get to film was by being a film critic. But I watched a lot of film in my adolescence, a whole bunch of film, and in a certain sense, much film of revision. For me, the films that most influenced me going into my 20s were the Polish films from the 50s and the beginning of the 60s and New Italian Realism. I wanted to see absolutely everything that had been done in this genre. But naturally, I went through this stage and later a new one came, the stage in which one thinks that one can make the revolution through film.

And so I got involved with activist film, the so-called cine de compromiso. This was at the end of the 60s. Fundamentally, for us, La hora de los hornos was a very strong experience in At that moment we thought that film had to be political. We began to distribute La hora de los hornos clandestinely. LS : Yes. HG : Certainly.

And how were people invited to see the films? By word of mouth? LS : Someone would invite his or her friends or study group and circles of 15 or 20 people were formed. They connected up with us and we would project La hora de los hornos followed by a discussion. HG : And did you all organize these discussions or were they spontaneous? LS : No, we organized these discussions at the end of the films ourselves.

In , we added another film about the Cordobazo that was made by a collective of ten directors. Well, it was the period of the dictatorship, the years 69, One faced very little risk compared with what happened after The film about the Cordobazo,whose anniversary is precisely today, depicted the students and workers movement in Cordoba that exploded on May 29, , as a more politicized prolongation of the movement events in France in To take to the streets, well, it was to think you could change the world.

In all of Latin America, this happened in the most political way. The Cordobazo was a very fundamental, significant, date. Workers, students, everyone took to the street, it was a complete mess. In all of the television channels, there were images of the Cordobazo. These images showed the mounted police retreated in the face of rock-throwing students. This was quite a crucial moment. Many young people thought it was possible to make the revolution.

Were you one of the organizers? LS : No, no. I helped Pablo Szir, who was my partner at the time and is the father of my daughter, to make a film that he directed. It had its own screenplay on which I and Guillermo Schelske collaborated. The film was about some Robin Hood-type bandits that the police and Army had killed in ; it was a fairly recent situation. Pablo today is also among the disappeared. We also spent two years filming the movie about a peasant who denounces police arrogance; he gets together with the Robin Hood-style bandits and together they are supported by the peasantry in the Chaco region because with the money they make from robberies and kidnappings, they help the peasants.

Can you tell me something about the origins of this project and your objectives and wishes as its director?

Ricky Martin - Vuelve (Spanish Video Remastered)

It was Julie Christie who stimulated me about the idea of telling this story that has much to do with my personal experience. Because Julie set herself up here in Argentina and began the quest to learn about out recent past. Julie came with the intention of staying seven weeks and ended up staying many, many months. She fell in love with Argentina and this was the origin of the idea of the English woman who comes to the country to understand what happened here.

After this experience with Julie, I decided to write a screenplay, which I ended up doing in collaboration with Graciela Maglie and Gabriela Massuh. What I wanted was to talk about memory,about a person who wanted to forget. But memory always returns. And it returns in the most hellish way, with hallucinations.

The character believes she has seen her disappeared husband in the street. What makes me proud about this film is that I feel that many peope who work on human rights identify with this film.

History is recounted from within, no? Because all of a sudden one begins to talk about something that one has never voiced before——that many of the disappeared were kept alive for a while. But afterwards, things were whitewashed even more. HG : It certainly does complicate the story.

The history that was already known throughout the world up until now. No just in Argentina. But also, through taking an individual perspective, a personal persepctive, is one of the most effective and powerful ways to talk about a very complicated and extensive situation. I think this has even more power. And I believe this is the importance of this project. LS : In a way, this film is about secrecy, about hiding. It is not only about the need to forget and the impossibility of forgetting, but also about secrecy, because there is secrecy in regards to the daughter.

And well, they are personal things. Very painful things, and I believe that it is because of this that so many people who have lived this type of experience identify with the film. HG : But it also seems to me that the film demonstrates an attitude about how to talk about political themes through film, and to have, as it has been said, a transformative experience.

But it seems to me it is also a way to tallk about the political through film and, as has been said, to have a transformative experience. And no to hace an attitude of didacticism in film. LS : I believe that this is a film in which the process begins when the film ends. A pesar de la heterogeneidad del grupo clasificado como miembros del nuevo cine—un grupo que incluye directores de talento y perspectiva muy diverso—se clasifica en este grupo todos los nuevos directores argentinos que han aparecido desde los s.

Y, bueno, y Y bueno, son cosas personales. Y no tener una actitud de un tipo didacticismo en el cine. For an extensive list of Che Guevara impersonators see Trisha Ziff, ed. Both films were presenting a different spin on the historical figure of Ernesto Che Guevara. Unlike the Hollywood stars who glamorously impersonated Guevara, Robles, with his trademark guerrillero look, had a specific queer left-wing political agenda.

A practicing journalist, Robles flirted with mass media outlets to draw attention to Chilean human rights demands, broadly defined, but also to specific LGBT demands, like the defense of lesbian motherhood and the derogation of article of the Chilean Penal Code that penalized sodomy between homosexual men. Jan 5, , online. It is evident that still today, Robles insists on evoking Che Guevara for his own political performance.

El no representa el realismo, sino que el idealismo, el gesto. I believe he is inspired by the dead Che, therefore, it is an interesting gesture, a disconsolate gesture, that links him more to the pathetic Che, the pathetic quality of a disarmed prophet, a semi-armed prophet. He does not represent realism but rather idealism, the gesture. Asthma marked the body of the guerrillero with frailty, turning him both into a doctor which he was by training of Latin American social illnesses and a patient for his own bodily condition. For the moment, any existing dialogue between the two Ches will remain on the page and between the two screens.

The conversation between impersonators has yet to occur. There is no justifi- als with one another and the cohesion necessary to cation that for the mere fate of having come to birth enjoy it. It is the currently prevailing international all human beings sharing in the structural essence economic order which is responsible that many of which constitutes us. If we study And finally we maintain the need for a free and the data of the worldwide distribution of income, it egalitarian community, where nobody remains con- is easily verifiable that no theory of justice could trolled by anyone else, so that individuals are able to accept, beneath any moderately sensible standard, develop their personality freely and fully.

Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile.

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Cultural Crisis. Galeano was given the primer desaparecido en la democracia, Argentina. Decides to declare the International Year and help manage chronic diseases such as diabetes, of Camelids; coronary conditions and cancer, Believing that such a celebration would create a 2. Year in the Julian calendar. Year in the Jewish Era begins on Oct. Islamic year of the Hijri calendar began on Oct.

There is a Gregorian-Hijri Dates Converter at www. Year ab Urbe condita. Buddhist year Armenian year National Gregory of Nazienzen holiday. Wilhelm Loehe January Victory of the Cuban revolution. Indigenous campesinos of Argentinean martyrs. Rebels take Belem and Pope Nicholas authorizes the enslavement of any Authorities in Lisbon order the extermination of the govern the province. African nation by the king of Portugal as long as the Janduim Indians in Brazil.

Mexico, defender of the poor and of Indigenous people. Baptism of the Lord 10 10 Aldo Isa 42, Ecuadorian Confederation, shot. January Raul Castro Bocel, campesino anti-mining activist, killed The United States Supreme Court proclaims the Roca begins the desert campaign in Patagonia by Guatemalan authorities. Marines land in Hawaii to impose a constitution, stripping monarchical authority and disenfranchising the Indigenous poor. Germany and the USA, usurping traditional rulers. January assassinated. Castillo, militant Salvadoran Christian murdered. More than , dead, plus total destruction.

Outside Canudos, Brasil. Indigenous campesinos of Guatemala. January Campesinos of Valle Alto, Bolivia are martyred. Red Cross workers catechists, martyrs in El Salvador. Pedro Alvares Cabral. Latin America, for defending the Indigenous peoples. Holocaust Memorial Day. Cuban war of independence. February fall of the Brazilian currency. Equality, therefore, is not the point of de- the Neolithic Age, when inequality increases, so that parture for humans: on the contrary, inequality is the only a few are happy.

The Neolithic is the age in Translation by Justiniano Liebl point of departure for humans, so that every human which people got organized according to their ability being trying to become truly human must struggle to accumulate goods: there was too much economic against its natural tendency to use power. Only by getting these two cerebral spheres to act slavery. Humanity, in the Neolithic Age, regressed to under the guidance of a third cerebral sphere -- the the law of the more powerful, endorsing the law that neo-cortex -- can an egalitarian society become real- prevails in the animal kingdom ity.

We all know that only by having this third sphere 2. The biblical world drinks of the global world This is the reason that equal- herits its features as a top-down and servile society ity is the goal and not the point of departure. Therefore we see Israel Equality depends on an attitude that people or applying to Egypt and neighboring nations the law of institutions assume in a particular historical point.

War to support it, justified in conscience by the exis- The historical trend proves that the human being tence of an unequal society. And we are told how the human commu- that are sinfully unequal and others that have equal- nity, threatened by superior animals, enjoyed a cer- ity. Israel should be equal to other free Liberation, Lover of Equality. The supreme clearest manifestations of all these are equality.

What more could be said and re-founds monarchy under Saul, David and Solomon, expected from God? In response, prophet-hood In the New Testament Jesus of Nazareth continu- appears defending social equality for the poor, the ally tries to fulfill this divine desire for equality.

And oppressed and the excluded. This becomes the key He does so, based on what it means to His Incarna- judgment that the Prophets throw up against bad tion: God in Him becomes equal to human beings and governors and managers of inequality In Him God BC. In him God reconstructs the rights and dignity of conscience of Israel again hits bottom as it becomes women Jn 4,10ff , when He offers the woman partic- convinced that the destiny of human beings is equal- ipation in His Own Being, through the image of water ity not inequality, which brings suffering and death.

And finally, Paul the exile, it condemns the agents of inequality: for- presents us a Jesus who renounces the power of His getfulness of God as a moral referent Gn 3 ; Cain and divinity and becomes equal to us human beings. Living of small nations Gn 10 and religion that pairs up with equality likens us to God. He was kidnapped and killed. February in El Salvador. The irst abolitionist Beginning of movement for 40 hour week Canada.

Mexico and Patriarch of Solidarity dies. February on the Cromotex factory in Lima, Peru. National holiday. Quilombos of Rosario, Brasil. See wikipedia. See her martyrial testimony at: vimeo. February the Guatemalan campesinos. Brazilian senator, dies. Sandino, Nicaraguan patriot, executed by A. Marines intervene in Nicaragua.

Lucia gains independence. President of Cuba. They will the centres of power and the villages of Galilee. They walk barefoot, they Military, tax collectors and landowners are concen- dispensed even their spare tunic. They will learn how trated in Sepphoris and Tiberias. They are those who to live among the excluded. Jesus does of Jesus. The situation in the villages is very differ- not think what his followers have to take with them, ent.

Mc properties of the powerful grow. It increased the num- 6,; Lk 9,; Mt 10,; Lk 10, These are the lowest. Making a special place for them in his life There are common traits that characterize this op- The Gospels describe Jesus as making a place for pressed sector: all of them are victims of the abuses the poor, sick and malnourished so they know that of those who have power and money; they live in a they have a privileged place in the Kingdom of God state of misery that may be impossible to leave; they Mt 4, He stops for beggars in his path so that are humiliated and without any dignity; they live ex- they do not feel abandoned by God Mc 10, Lensky , lives without a future.

He wants to be 2. Jesus, identified with the lowest in the middle of that society torn apart by inequality The Gospels do not talk about the presence of Je- between rich and poor, attestant that God wants to sus in Sepphoris and Tiberias. It is presented through build a new world where the lowest will be the first to the villages of Galilee where they live that have been be welcomed with open arms and defended. Jesus Announces and opens ways to the 4.

Defending the victims Kingdom of God, without any complicity with the cen- The Kingdom of God does not belong to everyone tres of power, and in direct contact with the people equally, the rich landowners banqueting in Tiberias most in need of dignity and liberation. Jesus Jesus was likely part of a family without land, wants to make it clear that in the unjust society either because they had been forced to divest them the Kingdom of God is good news for the downtrod- to pay their debts, or because they had emigrated from den and a threat to the rich oppressors.

Due to their dependency on a ready received your comfort. Blessed are you who hun- fairly unreliable job, especially in times of drought ger now, for you will be satisfied… Woe to you who are and famine. It would be, head Lk 9, He has renounced the imperial system security of Sepphoris or Tiberias.

But he is with them. The Prophet defender of the ciety. The most powerful classes and most oppressed poor, who speaks with total conviction. The son of strata seem to belong to the same society, but they God incarnated within the lowest, who even today is are separated by an invisible barrier: that door that shouting at us all: Those who do not interest anybody the rich never cross to approach the beggar Lazarus. The obstacle to building one These words do not mean the end of hunger and world more human and worthy, is us the rich, and we misery right now, but they confer an absolute dignity continue deepening the abyss that separates us from to the innocent victims.

The lowest are the beloved the lowest. Jesus puts us face to face with the bloodi- of God. Their lives are sacred. Life will never be built est reality in the world in the eyes of God: the unfair anywhere the way God wants it to be, if it is not for and cruel suffering of millions of innocent victims. That suffering is the first enforceable truth to all No religion will ever be blessed by God if they turn human. Nobody can deny it. All ethics must take it their backs to them. Any policy has to address They are not blessed by their poverty, much less by; it if does not want to be an accomplice to crimes their hunger and their misery is not an enviable State against humanity.

All religion must listen if they do for anyone. Jesus calls them blessed because God not wish to be a negation of the most sacred. We must honestly listen to Jesus. Many of us do not belong to the most impoverished, deprived or ex- 5. The radical denunciation of Jesus cluded sectors. We are not the lowest of the Earth. But With a penetrating gaze, Jesus reveals the cruel we can learn to make more room in our life, listening reality of Galilee in a parable collected by LK to their questions and most dramatic protests, sharing The story speaks of a powerful rich man.

His life their suffering, making us responsible for their humili- is a continual feast. He has no name because he has ation, defending their cause tirelessly. We have to no human identity. He is nobody. His life, empty of resist continuing to enjoy our small wellness, void of unconditional love, is a failure.

He belongs to everyone and no one. He has no one. He only has a name, full of lock ourselves in our communities mentally pushing promise, Lazarus or Eliezer, meaning God is help. The rich man has it all. John Baptist Metz who has spent hunger near his mansion. Does this not represent years denouncing the Christian communities of the many powerful rich people who today live in thriving countries of wealth is right, there is too many songs countries?

Lazarus the beggar lives in extreme neces- and few cries of outrage, too much complacency and sity, hungry, sick, excluded by those who can help little nostalgia for a more humane world, too much him. Does this not represent millions of people aban- solace and little hunger for justice.

Will we continue doned to their fate in the lowest countries on earth? Our victims are who best q demnation. It is not necessary. His compassionate and help us to know the reality of the world and all that penetrating gaze is exposing the injustice of that so- we need to be human.

House of Rep- Third attack against Canudos, Brazil. French territory of Louisiana. Supreme Court rules on the Amistad case that Spanish conquest of Guatemala. Pennsylvanian militiamen at Gnadenhutten, Ohio. James J. Reeb, Unitarian minister and civil rights Fujimori is sentenced to 25 years in prison.

British colonial rule. This is the irst case of the imprisonment Evo Morales begins to distribute landholdings to of Latin American military involved in coups. Marines land in Honduras. More than assassinated by Brazilian police. Escobedo and companions among the poor in Peru. Isreali bulldozer while protesting the demolition of Rodolfo Aquilar, a 29 year old parish priest, martyred World Water Day UN Palestinian homes.

Great Britain and Ireland. Argentinean State: 4, assassinated and 30, disappeared. Free and happy people have fewer needs. The the sharing of the goods of the Earth for the use same path was followed by his disciple Diogenes and enjoyment of all the human beings constitute of Sinope Asia Minor , who was banished from his three invariant utopias woven throughout the his- city, and got rid of everything that was not essen- tory of humanity and made literally for centuries tial, he lived an itinerant existence and was free in different cultures to form a literary genre and a and cosmopolitan.

Anywhere was his home. In his book The Republic advocates the to different situations social, cultural, political, abolition of private property among the guards, religious, etc. But in all of them, there are three which is the most important class and whose life- listed at the beginning. In this article I will make a style is very demanding and it all depends on the journey through some of the utopian lands to prove class, and from it emerge the rulers. They must it, starting with the ancient Greece, considered the devote themselves exclusively to the service of the birthplace of utopias and utopian thinking, to the city.

Therefore they should renounce all staff, not a present day, focusing on the utopias forged in the family, not possessing any property, single parent- West. Wealth cre- of the city was to regulate questions relating to ates greed, and greed is the source of all the evils property, considered the main cause of civil strife , of the state. Do this, says Phaleas, life without private ownership or division of labor, from the foundation of the city because then it is slaves without masters, without specific economic more difficult to channel it. Some authors consider forms for agricultural work or for the family.

There Phaleas a precursor of socialism.

The rich man is not the one with a lot of The ideal of the Christian community of Je- money, but the one who is wise. That ideal, which perhaps fails to align self-interest with the public interest, never became reality, excluded by their very nature slave behaviors of the industrial revolution, which the existence of indigent people. Proposed moving servitude of slaves and the servility of the social and economic alternatives to the current children, the liberation of the oppressed, commu- model.

For example, Robert lived without classes, as interpreted by Bloch, in Owen with their agricultural cooperatives in Indiana a monastic communism rooted in the earth. This and Etienne Cabet with the egalitarian Republic of ideal became a reality in the middle ages for a time Icaria first in Texas and Illinois. Private ence and utopia, but between abstract utopia and property creates serfs and Lords, causes clashes concrete utopia.

And equalities. He says that the current social and eco- all of this is legitimized by the public laws. Utopia in which Communism is governed by the law of competitiveness and stron- the current system. Each neighborhood is self-suffi- ger; b considers the human being as a consumer cient and has their own barns, kitchens and dining good throwaway and fosters a culture of discard- halls.

Meals are common. There is nothing in that ing; c generates a globalization of indifference regime that promotes the selfishness and attach- incapable of compassion to the cries of those who ment to private property. The principle governing suffer; d it has, in short, a potential disintegration relations between the people of the city is the love and Death. Branco and 20 gunmen. Christians, martyred in resistance to the dictatorship Quebec General Strike. America, in Cuba.

Thus begins 21 from the British who occupied it in President Truman signs the Marshall Plan for the post-war reconstruction of Europe. It will protect the national industry for several years. Bolivia cedes Antofagasta and imposes martial law. Dietrich Bonhoeffer of Confederation is assassinated. Vincent arrive in Trujillo, Honduras. They men in Colfax, Louisiana. They lasts four days until he is returned to ofice. Three South Carolina. The major Argentinian picketing movement takes her name, MTR.

The State military police kill 23 people. New World, founder of the irst schools and hospitals, U. Marines land at La Ceiba, Honduras. Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. Day of Forgiveness for the World. Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare all died. Duvalier dies, Haiti. Church, dies. Louisiana Territory. Or rather: they dream of being part of With surprising frequency, the most significant the privileged minority that enjoys a lifestyle equiva- change is driven by images, symbols and stories that lent to that of Australia or the United States.

To At this point it is clear, however, that if every illustrate, let me offer a few examples. This movement arose not Evidence of the power of this understandable so much as a reaction against the miserable living but destructive fantasy is the huge number of lot- conditions that afflicted so many inhabitants of medi- tery tickets sold in all our countries. Buyers do not eval fiefdoms. Rather, it grew out of new fascinations: consciously realize they are seeking inequality: they classical art and literature, the emerging empirical merely desire, for themselves and their families, the sciences, and the urge to explore frontiers unknown to lifestyle enjoyed by a small, privileged minority of the inhabitants of the medieval countryside and villages.

These fascinations led Europe into an unimagined his- This dream has managed to overshadow the so- torical transformation: the rise of the modern world. A trivial but significant symbol of this It is true that European living conditions were often fascination is the enthusiasm generated by images of close to intolerable. Tens of millions of men, women and above all to the globalized communications media children left everything behind and embarked for an and their skilful use of images capable of triggering unknown future on the myth-laden shores of America.

We population. Far from generating new social and cul- assume that human societies respond to their current tural movements, however, this scourge led to politi- circumstances with plans, programs, and strategies cal instability and economic stagnation. It triggered that determine the course of history. Many recruits to Yihad- achieved a more and more detailed understanding of inspired bands are young men condemned to lives of the long and transforming journey of living beings on permanent unemployment: they seek some affiliation Planet Earth. This four-billion-year adventure shows capable of providing a sense of meaning in their lives.

This most recent period Those who are aware of these threats have not — the era in which we humans appeared on Earth — always responded in helpful ways. Often we have has witness the most wildly varied manifestations of painted apocalyptic scenarios designed generate fear; emergent beauty: the colors and aromas of flowers; or else we have incited feelings of guilt, reproach- the taste of fruit and honey; butterflies and fireflies; ing our listeners for their supposed complicity in the flight of birds; the songs of whales; and the contaminating the environment or squandering non- manifold sensitivities and intelligences of mammalian renewable resources.

And despite efforts to raise awareness of these All this beauty would appear to anticipate the up- and other problems, the impossible dream — the surge, in the human realm, of an incalculably greater dream of a U. This fascination has all the of a new and transformative myth capable of captur- earmarks of an addiction, including its alarming self- ing imaginations and unleashing prodigious collective destructive bent.

We cannot allow ourselves legitimate but indispensable: a yearning for the abun- the luxury of any action that is not of the greatest ur- q dant life. For perhaps the first time in the long hu- gency and undeniable effectiveness. Let us sit down, man journey, the great masses can aspire — somewhat then: let us tell one another stories. Coro insurrection of Indigenous and Black peoples, dies in their defense. Africa after the irst multiracial elections in the history Josimo Morais Tavares, priest and land reform of the country. He was S. Imperatriz, Brazil.

National Holiday. Afro-Americans who have been raped and tortured to Luis Aredez, medical doctor, is martyred for his solidarity Massacre of the Sumpul River, El Salvador, where death by White hacienda owners, Brazil. Colombia is invaded by the army. Sandino, Nicaraguan patriot, is born. A call to eliminate the de Janeiro. Brazil sends soldiers to support a State Coup in Santo Domingo.

South America. Velho, RO, Brazil. The U. For the capi- country. William I. This situation is stimulating It is presently passing from a world economy to critical investigators to search for a new paradigm to a global economy. His well received A Theory of Global Capitalism, edit. Of not of labor, but rather of assets owned particu- course, there is an hegemony of citizens of the U. His central thesis is that of North America, but globalization involves inter- growth-rates of capital steadily exceeding those of connected economies, including those of emerging production and income, bring about unsustainable nations and therefore multi-national corporations; mechanisms of inequality.

Wealth grows impres- but all are un-fettered by national governments. Piketty proposes a are making, Farrar, Strauss and Ginoux, New York policy of scaled-up taxation and a differential treat- Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Julio Boltvinik, an analyst of the economy, discusses how this excessive inequality is seriously questions the defense by the neo-liberal model of its compromising our future.

These phenomena are return. The risk is all the more tion. The only solution will be a radical transfor- To justify themselves this super-class has its mation that is both peaceful and profound. Causas naturales. Federation CUT , Christian labor prophet. Brazil, is assassinated. Charles Luanga and companions, Ugandan martyrs, resulting in thousands of casualties. Kennedy shot in Los Angeles, California. He is accused of crimes in the Chilean tribunals and sought internationally. Guatemalan military. Ramadan begins After 30 years of struggle, the lands of the campesinos in the Paraguayan Agrarian Leagues are returned to them.

African prison. There are attributes? Why this initial inequality? If we start people who are born healthy and strong and others from an initial inequality is not social inequality in- are born ill. There are people who are born beautiful evitable? There are people who are Social inequality is undoubtedly inevitable if born smart, strong or beautiful and later suffer dur- society is organized around competitiveness and ing their lives an accident or an illness that deprives also considers private property an absolute right.

In them or diminishes significantly those attributes. Their for example, when a mother takes some medicine or children though intelligent, healthy and beautiful, are substances during pregnancy or when environmental born marginalized and poor. Accidents and petitive natural disadvantage and the end result is a illnesses that appear during a lifetime may also be world where the gap between the rich and the poor a consequence of human direct actions or of an un- is ever increasing.

According to the Rule of Saint or even inhuman conditions such as those in the Benedict VI C , which is in force in my monastery, coltan mines in Congo. But here we do ity of attributes when born or the fact of being the not wish to say there is discrimination of people, God victim of an accident or illness during a lifetime are a forbid!

Therefore, he who consequence of social inequality, it is clear that there needs less must thank God and never feel sad; but he are also very many cases in which inequality is not who needs more, be humble and do not feel proud for the fruit of human individual or collective acts. I call the attention given. Is it dear things. Does it form part of his creative will? In the Parable of the Talents Mt 25, , nar- God does not want inequality.

He expects from us rated by Mathew just before the Parable of the Final a reaction against natural inequality through solidar- Judgment, we find Jesus comparing God to a man ity, so it does not end in social inequality. Why is there natural inequality? Would it the third only one. Does God place responsibility world that is saturated with visual stimuli. Why did God not We should also emphasize the revalorization of create a world where each had diverse gifts and pe- children and adults with Down syndrome.

From hid- culiarities, but where there was no ugliness or illness ing them at home and considering them a family or persons born or left after an accident deprived of shame, we have gone to socially discovering their their personal autonomy? Why did not God create a special emotional intelligence and value them for it world where the diverse personal gifts would not im- and for the challenge their presence supposes to our ply a competitive disadvantage?

The answer is simple: false competitive values. When there is a child with because God does not wish or expect us to organize Down syndrome in class, what is the point of reward- ourselves socially in a competitive way. What is being rewarded through that action? Everybody knows When does diversity —which is a positive value-, the child with Down syndrome will never be the best become inequality, considered a social disadvantage?

And that is not because there is no per- In our world there are people today who suffer be- sonal merit or personal effort. The child with Down cause they were born with dark skin instead of white syndrome helps his classmates to question the social skin or were born a woman instead of a man. In the case of blindness, there have been spectacular changes that The problem is not the crisis; it is the socio- endorse this perspective.

Throughout history, social economic model. It is family or charities. Thanks specially to the tactile not only a matter of trying to avoid the fact that a method of reading and writing developed by Braille in natural inequality becomes a social inequality, but , to the change in mentality this implied and the of questioning up to what point what we consider multiple structural adaptations socially implemented natural inequality is really an enriching diversity, and since then, blind people who have access to these organizing ourselves to deal charitably with those q measures may avoid social marginality today and are we consider naturally disadvantaged, but recognizing generally respected as particularly sensible people them as simply our equals.

Indigenous peoples. Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz. Louis, Illinois shooting the inhabitants as they try to for land in the Dominican Republic. South Africa, alter 30 years. Seven other agents of the DINA were also condemned. Discrimina- tion because of race, color and religion is condemned as a contravention. Leagues, dies of torture, Paraguay. National Holiday, Argentina.

Taken prisoner, he died there. Honduras against military impunity. Indigenous persons sold as slaves in the Peninsula. Rioja, Argentina. Guanajuato for his refusal to cease his resistance Independence of Colombia, National Holiday. Juan Cotzal, Guatemala. Pollination, water cycle, giving nization that Western societies have developed and birth, caring for the elderly, for example, disappear in imposed.

We are are socially unwelcome at the expense of the destruc- now in a situation of planetary emergency, because tion or depletion of finite materials or damaging the what is being threatened is survival in dignified con- regenerative capacity of nature. Just a couple of centuries working under this lo- Humans are radically eco-dependent. All we need gic, have generated a deep decline of fossil fuels and to maintain life and satisfy our material needs comes many other materials without which the global eco- from nature, on the basis of a physically limited pla- nomic metabolism cannot be conceived; the climate net.

To assume these physical limits implies inevitably change threatens with expulsion from the biosphere the understanding that nothing, absolutely nothing, a great part of the living world, including the human may grow in a limitless way. During all their life, but mainly at some people in all axis of domination. In is survive without the time that other persons devote to economic metabolism what predominates is canni- care for them. The capitalist economy so called welfare societies: a great part of the popu- grows at the expense of the destruction of all we do lation is sinking into precariousness and millions of need to survive.

It is based on a belief that is both people find themselves in a situation of exclusion: illusory and dangerous: that the individuals are au- they no longer count nor are they seen. A process of weakening has declared war on life… What the hegemonic eco- the right of labor has appeared. Many people are em- nomic science imagines is full of myths. It considers ployed but are poor workers. This situation causes a The third is that this transition will not be sim- deepening of inequalities between men and women. Can the privileges of the elites now goes unattended and the families are who come be maintained and at the same time a decent life for to take charge of solving vital precariousness.

Obviously no. Dis- exclusion. And within homes, where patriarchal and pute of economic hegemony with the challenge of unequal relations predominate, it is women who designing a productive model that is adjusted to the mainly take the burden of those tasks the public re- bio-capacity of the earth and minimizes economic sources stopped providing. They are, due to the sexual and patriarchal inequalities , dispute of the political division of labor in patriarchal societies, who have hegemony to obtain a democratic organization that most difficulties to access the basic resources.

The ecocidal and unjust system of life that we see today can only continue because it counts on Some unavoidable issues the unconscious complicity of the majorities, because The first is the need to cope with the inevita- it has been able to make people see with the same ble decrease in the material field of the economy: eyes than those who oppress them. It has been able humanity, like it or not, will live with less energy and to make people see as theirs the notions of progress, materials. It is not an option, it is a starting fact.

We need to cultura- or military power continue with their style of material lly rearm ourselves. The treatment that their new and obligations. If we have a planet with limited constitutions give to nature as subject of law, com- resources, which as well is partially degraded and munal rights or the logic of the commons must feed decreasing, the only possibility of justice is the distri- the struggles that are appearing in the Global North. To fight against poverty is the same It is about helping the global movement grow to stop as to fight against the accumulation of wealth.

Inevi- the extractive dynamics natural and social and the tably, then, will be to desecrate and to question the massive expulsion of people, and to foster and de- legitimacy of property linked to accumulation which mand governments who already are on this path, and prevents a decent life for many people. In the field of to eradicate from institutions those who continue the q obligations, on the one hand material sufficiency will biocidal logic. It is now a question of survival.

Spanish-American War. Finally a meeting was possible on March 17, from the United States to destabilize Govern- towards the 00 hours. The encounter was at ments trying to carry out an autonomous country his farm, on the outskirts of the capital Montevi- project.

That is what is happening in the North deo. There he was, with may endanger their historical privileges. But the his shirt sweaty and torn by the work in the field, bulk of the conversation was about the situation with very used sport pants and rough sandals, of the system-life and system-Earth. There I rea- which let us see his feet caked with dust, like lized the wide horizon of his vision of the world.

Already been offered one million our planet and the future of our civilization.

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He dollars for it; he has rejected the offer out of said, between meditative and worried that may- respect for the old truck carrying him daily to the be we will have to witness major disasters, until Presidential Palace, and with regard to the friend the heads of State will realize the gravity of our who had given it to him. Otherwise, He does not accept being considered poor.

He spent thirteen years in concern for organizing a plural and global ma- prison, and a good time inside a hole, and he nagement of the planet Earth, now that those has to deal with the consequences to this day. Each country prefers to But he never talk about that, nor shows the least defend their particular rights, without attending bit of resentment.

He says that life made him go to the General threats that weigh on the totality through many difficult situations; but all were of our destiny. I want to return to, was the urgency of crea- We talked more than one hour and a half. We ting an alternative culture to the dominant, the started with the situation of Brazil and, in gene- culture of the capital. Little does it matter, he ral, of Latin America. It leads the thousand dollars from the salary of the poor to want to be like the rich. The culture of the capital, revealed in his weekly radio program, that he do- nated thousand dollars of his salary during emphasized Mujica, can not give happiness, be- his five years in Government.

He also live: the infernal spiral of ceaseless consumption. It is difficult, noted Mujica, to lay not intervene by regulating in some way, the the foundation for this humane and friendly cultu- distribution of wealth that is spontaneously re of life. We must begin with ourselves. He looked at known as the President with the most solidarity me deeply and I saw his eyes completely well up and the most humble of the world, since during with emotion.

Marines end 10 years of occupation of Haiti. Rock Spring, Wyoming. They will be expelled. Cartagena, Colombia. More than 19 die. Indigenous people are not human. Walker in Nicaragua. President Peron, Argentina. Lara, catechist, martyrs in Guatemala. Word, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala, martyr. Bertrand Aristide. International Peace Day U. Spanish conquistadors. Hidalgo, pastor of Dolores, for calling for Independence. Bosh, an admirer of the Cuban revolution, is deposed.

Serchio valley on the central front of the Gothic Line the Spanish conquest in the Dominican Republic. Jews from Kiev and its suburbs at the hands of the Nazis. It will continue beginning of Operation Condor. Aristide, and begin a massacre. Housing deficit affects Latin of course, to the Ancient Regime. But Aires. Indeed, Property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one in , Buenos Aires was the focal point of this may be deprived thereof, unless an indisputable pub- historical fact: the first rent strike was led by brave lic necessity, legally ascertained, requires it; and a anarchists and socialists during three months.

They protested against the dispro- Nowadays in our Region, the inviolable and portionate rent increase that owners wanted to apply sacred character of the Private Property- explicitly for this precarious and uncomfortable housing. The relationships of gratuity, reciprocity, mutuality and constitutional status as of , in the Argentine cooperation.

Republic, is awarded to one of them: housing. Ar- Later on, after last half of 20th century, from the ticle 14bis fully embodies it, and an adjective with global pulpit that are the encyclicals, Pope Paul VI a strong meaning was added: decent housing. The had collected the rich and powerful biblical tradition conquest of this fundamental right is surrounded by and that of the Fathers of the Church. There is no reason in keep- ing countries—. In , another fifty years later, the present Objections were arisen by the sacred story about Buenos Aires City political administration has won Private Property, but just a few people were ready to the elections for the first time.

In our case, in the city, a strong process in different neighborhoods and the City property concentration -in hands of holdings, cor- Housing Institute Instituto de Vivienda de la Ciudad porations, building brokers , and so on,- has grown -IVC stripping, all has severely undermined housing exponentially, but detached of economic growth and accessibility.

Both realities -increas- Look at some numbers. Many social organizations ingly far apart- have been triggered by the growing are denouncing that more than inhabitants inequality to access to such a basic good as housing. At the same time, The Norwegian Eide Asbjorn, intellectual reference houses are vacant, there are ten- when thinking about Human Rights, points out: if a ants.

But, if the same State wants to grant the local Proyecto 7 Project 7. Buenos Aires City, which is partially under a gentri- In the words of the sociologist and philosopher fication process. The further dignity progresses, far further in a process of eviction. Resistance and negotiations took place during Osvaldo Bayer - writer, historian and political activ- a year. In , these Because it must at least ensure decent housing to families had to abandon their poor rooms.

Bringing families with children …. The building development ples will retain full validity of Human Rights only by was never carried out. The building front is walled-up conquering deeply rooted participatory democracies. Neither homeless, nor vacant often displacing low-income families and small businesses.

Nicaraguan government shots down a cargo plane and States on Indigenous lands. Word, is martyred in Honduras. Cry of the excluded in various countrues of L. Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro. Labor of Quebec is kidnapped by the FLQ. Martin Luther King Jr. Paul of the Cross founding father of Haiti, is assassinated. Aniversary of the Signing of the U. Charter, Indigenous people for 24 dollars.

Cheyenne, Sioux and Navajo peoples. Mexico and social activist. Vincent and the Grenadines, Mauricio Maraglio, missionary, martyr to the struggle National Holiday. The harassment grew more complicated until which, once accepted the end of geo-centrism, were Galileo had to forswear before the Inquisition of all still tied to anthropocentrism: our human species he had written and taught, to avoid being tortured, continues to be the center not the geometric center although he was put under house arrest permanently. Against the Gospels, historic Christianity has it the king of stars, but it is at the fringes of a gal- intended to control thinking rigorously and merci- axy that at the same time orbits around an unknown lessly.

In this few years he limited himself to his discoveries in the field of it has found already some , but it knows that experimental science: he saw the Sun did not move there must be trillions of them in all the cosmos. It around the Earth but the other way round and that assumes that, with just a small percentage of them the Moon and planets were not celestial beings made situated at affordable distances for life, there will be of incorruptible matter, but astronomic bodies like millions and millions of planets hosting life.

Plant the Earth. Animal life? Human life? Spiritual life? It Platonic and Aristotelian astronomic theory, was all was for this reason that Giordano Bruno was burnt together the official doctrine. The Catholic Church alive. It has decided that between faith and astro- of the cosmos almost three centuries went by before physics there will be no conflict, and there is not, it accepted it. Even the Astronomic tion for the Doctrine of Faith, erected a statue to Observatory at the Vatican allows itself to insinuate commemorate Galileo in the Vatican gardens.

In his the possibility of the existence of other types of life speech, John Paul II expressed that utopia: the con- different from the one we know and we are. One can be Is the conflict between science and faith re- Christian and accept the heliocentric theory. Even when the present Inquisi- nal thinking.

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In The Laws, Plato proposes that athe- tion is not talking about it, it is with other sciences ists and ungodly people be punished with solitude, that there is conflict still, such as Anthropology and re-education, and that, if they do not repent, the Epistemology, for example. Despite the humility that punishment is death.

Plato invented religious intoler- characterizes today the scientific method, these sci- ance, inquisition and concentration camps thus. The has, showing that what we have said and still say Middle Ages would be a dark tunnel, of ghosts and with respect to the field of faith, leaves much to be superstitions, of fear and lack of freedom. Trying hard to avoid the risk of struggle between religions and the world of science subjectivism, the West worked to rebuild its knowl- or the so called information society can be found.

It was the project of modern science, present science, cannot adopt doctrines, symbols from whose method Galileo was one of its founders. It at hand, but a new way of being and living in the is not out of ill will, or pride: it is an epistemologi- world. A new form of being human. A new state cal inability their minds work differently, in a way of conscience. The modern human being is deeply incompatible with the traditional axioms of mythical marked by science, which is now part of its being.

And it is an irreversible transformation: On the contrary, submission to beliefs or mythical it is not that they do not want, it is that they cannot traditions, away from or against! They cannot stop feeling they are subjects how venerable they are, is now unacceptable. It comes from much earlier, maybe from the ity before our existence.

Every religion that does not times of the first Greek thinkers, 25 centuries ago. The scientific-philo- The mythical thinking and the inquisitorial reli- sophical explanations, of the physicist-philosophers gions probably have still a long life ahead in history. Ionian of that time, left the profession of diviners But there are already uncountable heirs of Galileo, and the clergy, who promoted the persecution of phi- father of modern science: Miguel Servet, iconic de- losophy, without foundations and clients.

Salvador, El Salvador. Daniel Ortega wins the presidency. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The irst experience of constructing socialism founder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, Justo Mejia, peasant unionist and catechist, is martyred in the world begins. Soren Kierkegaard Abolition of slavery in Nicaragua. Climaco, a Philippine politician and prominent Brazil is declared a Republic.

America in El Salvador are massacred by the military. Columbine Mine in Colorado. Brazilian Navy. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Brothers in El Salvador. Kahlo, dies in Mexico. The various Protes- gious movement that strongly marked our world: the tant groups launched a popularization of reading the Protestant Reformation. October 31 is the symbolic Bible, as well as a broad commitment to leadership by day for this movement which, sparked by a protest the laity.